Global Warming: These Regions Will Become Too Hot and Unlivable in 2050, According to NASA

Extreme levels of heat stress have more than doubled in the last 40 years, with significant implications for human health

As Earth’s climate warms, incidences of extreme heat and humidity are rising, with significant consequences for human health. Climate scientists are tracking a key measure of heat stress that can warn us of harmful conditions.
NASA uses a particular thermal index and data from its satellites to help predict which areas will be uninhabitable due to global warming in 30 to 50 years.

Global warming has already begun to take its toll, as evidenced by the latest report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). According to the experts, by the end of the century, the temperature on Earth should increase by 1.5°C and the frequency of hot spells should be multiplied by four. Based on this assumption, NASA has tried to determine the areas of the globe that will no longer be habitable in 2050.

To establish these regions, NASA relied on several tools, including the heat index, which combines humidity and air temperature, as well as the wet bulb (temperature of the wet thermometer). The wet bulb is a more accurate measure of the lowest temperature of an object or body once the humidity has evaporated. Objective: to define the moment when our body can no longer cool down.

REGIONS THAT ARE ALREADY EXPOSED

Thus, NASA has established that a person could not live if the wet-bulb index is higher than 35°C during six hours. This temperature has already been recorded several times in the subtropical regions of Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. As an article of Future-Sciences points out, a large part of the Earth’s warm and humid regions have a wet bulb index between 25 and 27°C maximum.

Within 30 to 50 years, several areas could become uninhabitable, due to a wet bulb index higher than 35°C. This could be the case, by 2050, of South Asia, the Persian Gulf (Iran, Oman, Kuwait), the countries bordering the Red Sea (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen). By 2070, eastern China and part of Brazil could also exceed 35°C. As well as several American states: Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa.

For its work, NASA has been able to rely on instruments installed onboard the International Space Station (ISS), including AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) and ECOStress (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment).

Read the full NASA report here

Photo Credit: Dustin Phillips (Flickr)

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